Facebook is experimenting with paid groups

By admin On Jun 23, 2018

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Facebook announced in a blog post that they want to make it easier for managers of Facebook groups to have the members pay for access to the group. This happened in certain groups as well, but that all worked quite awkwardly with separate groups that were only for subscribers and where the money went outside of Facebook to the administrators.

Now Facebook to help the administrators has realized a number of tools that will make it a lot easier to maintain this kind of paid groups. First, there is admin support, where administrators can always go for help with managing their groups and of which Facebook says they get an answer within one working day. In addition, there are of course online help where you as an administrator can check everything.

Extra features and (still) free of charge

In addition, as administrator, you get a number of handy tools. So you can approve certain members (such as help-admins) in advance, then you do not have to look at everything that comes along and so you have more time to be busy with your community. You can also create fixed rules, such as ‘no spam’ or ‘do not do bad’ and they are shown automatically. If someone then writes about it you can just tap one of those lines and then they will know immediately why a post has been removed.
The question is how many groups really need this. Administrators can ask for between five and thirty dollars a month for access to the group, but what you get back just before that will only become clear when you are there. Now it is true that less crazy situations can occur if Facebook is always in between because then administrators cannot afford (or at least we hope) to ask for money based on promises that are then broken. But will Facebook interfere? They do not receive part of the revenues that managers receive from the subscriptions.

Exclusive groups

This is striking, but it will have everything to do with the fact that it is still an experiment that is only available on mobile. The feature is now gently tested in the US with cooking and parenting groups. An example of the latter, the College Admissions Group, promises access to college counselors for parents of students but also costs $ 30 per month.

Whether this really is a necessary development for Facebook is highly questionable, but it is a way to generate structural income in the longer term without being dependent on advertisements. So if you start a paid group later, base your calculation models on 70 percent of what you really get.